Your favourite Twitch streams are about to get a hell of a lot more interactive. Twitch have just announced Twitch Extensions, which can be directly attached to streams to “grow the unique relationship between creators and their communities.”
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When Extensions launches there’ll be 20 to chose from. These will range from relatively generic add-ons, like What’s Playing, which tells you what music is currently accompanying the stream, to highly specific extensions, built to work alongside a particular game.
Some highlights from those include Innkeeper: Interactive Hearth Overlay, which gives an interactive deck overlay and card tooltips for Hearthstone. There’s also OP.GG for League of Legends, which provides in-game stats, and Isaac Tracker, which gives the seed and item details of specific Binding of Isaac runs.
There are also extensions for Destiny, Overwatch, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and Rocket League.
Some personal favourites from the list include Kappa Pet, which is a virtual pet that lives on the stream, and Smart Click Maps, which allows players to vote on what’s happening on stream by clicking.
While the list will be limited at launch, Extensions will be an open platform meaning that anyone can develop new ones to expand the selection. According to product manager Ryan Lubinski, “if you have an idea, you can make it a reality right here on Twitch.” That means you can create your own tools for whatever game you like: “If the community wants an Extension for a given game, Twitch Extensions allows them to build it.”
The rollout date for Extensions hasn’t been announced, but Lubinski says the first details are due to be released during TwitchCon’s ‘dev day’ on October 19. Twitch’s website says Extensions are “coming soon.” Meanwhile, the Twitch Extensions beta has been running for a little while.